


Collide

by dreamoverdrive



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 22:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3225047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamoverdrive/pseuds/dreamoverdrive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set pre-book three to post-book four. The brief collisions in which they remember, forget, and resume the cycle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place between Book 2 and Book 3.

His skin shrank and became brittle parchment stretched over his bones, his lips cracked and bled down his chin, and he thought (he _knew_ ) that he could hear the drip of water somewhere. He could never be certain if it was real or not but he could hear the tantalizing fall and the brief splatter as it laid there—not for him to touch and not for him to feel.  

_Drop_

_Drop_

_Drop_

When he woke up every breath in felt like a battle as his fingers twisted in the sheets. He wanted to scream out the horror clawing its way up his throat, but he found the cold sweat trickling down his neck could be bent away by a feverish twitch of his fingers. He was struck with such relief that it tightened his throat and every other muscle in his body into absolute immobility and silence. He thought he could have died from the feeling of sheer _relief_.

He stared at the salty water in the hollow of his palm and he wondered when it would ever end.

* * *

 

Tahno realized the answer was never.

He sat in the same booth seat, the same thin glass in his hand making never ending circuits to his mouth. The same people were there, hunched over the table in an effort to get a good look at him. The gleam in their eyes told him why they were so interested—why they were so absorbed in whatever meaningless collection of words he let slip from his lips.

They were waiting for him to snap.

If he was being honest with himself, they always had been. Even before _the incident_ they had leaned over the table in that same way, elbows braced on the wood and noses lifted to the air in search of smoke to ferret out the fire. Before it all he had just mistaken their morbid desire to see one so great tumble as admiration. He supposed it was in a way.

But now the predatory twist to their expressions was far too easy to see. The airy laughter and the quips came less easily and several times too often, he had to clasp his hands under the tables because _damn it all if he would let them see him shake._

He wondered if this is how she had felt.

* * *

 

When he saw her again, he wasn’t quite sure why he felt the need to hide.

After all, here he was, back in his crisp suit with simpering hands resting on his biceps. The crowd had been parting for him all night and it would have been terribly easy for him to make his way through all the clacking heels over to where she was sat next to the newly-elected President.

But he didn’t.

He sent the clingers on their merry way and found that he had stumbled out onto the balcony to brace his arms on the marble balustrade. The air he sucked in was cold but he could taste the water in it.

_In._

_Out._

_In._

“Hey, Pretty Boy.”

It would be a lie to say he didn’t nearly pitch over the barrier at the sound of her low voice that came suddenly from beside him. His eyes flashed open and he looked over—

She was laughing at him.

He wasn’t used to being laughed at—of course there had been the derisive laughter when they saw him coiled in the alleys, too empty to drag himself out of the rotting slush—but this was not laughter he had known before. Kind eyes, a kinder smile, and _interest_ that wasn’t barbed.

She leaned an arm beside his. “It’s polite to return greetings.”

He blinked and it took a moment for him to reverse back into familiar territory. “Of course,” he drawled. “How could I have neglected to greet one such as you?”

Her lips quirked and he couldn’t tell if it was from irritation or amusement. “I’m not very forgettable, am I?”

He was suddenly very aware of the bitter tone in those words and the slight hint of resignation as she stared out at the view of the bay. But it was madness because she was never one to desire being—

“Neither am I.”

His words came out and interrupted his own train of thought. They were said without pride and he wondered how the two of them could have come from boasting to regretting so quickly.

She studied him carefully with new intensity and when her eyes searched his, he felt like he’d been stripped bare. Yet one thing remained the same—he refused to look away. That first moment all that time ago had been charged and thrillingly electric, yet this one was just as powerful in its own way. He stared down and she stared up but there was no smirk and no bristling— just painful honesty that made his chest ache.

“Avatar Korra?” They both looked over at the attendant who had cracked the door open, letting the golden glow of the party’s light spill across the stone floor. “It’s time for your speech.”

“Alright.”

She stepped forward into the glow, leaving Tahno behind. The whole situation was far too familiar to be comfortable so he shoved his hands into his pockets where she couldn’t see them shaking in fists.

“See you around, Pretty Boy.”

He forced a smile and now this was just _excruciating._

“See you around, Uh-vatar.”


	2. Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set the day before Korra leaves to rebuild the air nation.

Korra wasn’t quite sure how she had ended up here in the first place.

It was freezing and damn, how was this wind blowing through all these buildings _just_ to sheet against her face? There was water streaking down her skin and it should have felt  _invigorating—_ after all, why else would she have ran out into the pitch black if it wasn’t for the rain—but it was suffocating and in her mouth and her eyes and her nose— _and why couldn’t she breathe_?

She was running and every slap of her boots against the slick pavement was a gamble but she’d been playing it safe for a little too long. This darkness was supposed to be the opposite of everything she was but here she was reveling in it even while drowning in it. She gasped, sucking in the sharp white light before the reverberating crash and her lungs felt electric. The blood coursing in her veins and pounding heavily in her neck felt like the hissing power that was slow to leave the air after the lightning and her pumping fists felt like the thunder.

She ran to get rid of the voices— _give me a reason to stop, I dare you._

She was escaping but she didn’t want to think about what from because there was no way this swallowing darkness could hide her from what she feared. She liked to _pretend_ and it was good to feel like she was  _succeeding_. Even when she skidded at a corner and rough cement bit into scrabbling hands, her pace barely faltered because they couldn’t catch up. Not now, not yet, not ever.

She found herself dashing through a street that felt more familiar than it looked because she wasn’t really seeing anything through the heavy stream of water into her eyes that she didn’t bother to brush away.

_Was that—_

_It couldn’t—_

She stumbled to a stop and the fire in her legs protested but she was rooted, staring at the dark figure in the dim light of the flickering lampposts. Long arms were held up, spread to the sky as if waiting to accept their rightful victory. She recognized the arms, posed in the long forgotten demand for  _praise_ and there was something terribly haunting about seeing them dripping rainwater onto the empty street.

She mouthed his name and swallowed the water that tumbled through her lips. Lighting flashed and there was white casting everything into sharp detail—the sopping hair, the once fine and now ruined clothes, the painfully upright posture off someone that was used to other’s attempts to knock him down—

_“Tahno!”_

Her voice was a blend with the split second thunder and the space in her chest shrieked with the lack of air till it was filled again by a shuddering breath in.

He turned slowly and she stood, not sure what she had meant to come after this. She wasn’t sure why she had stopped, why she hadn’t just run on, but she figured it had something to do with the knowing curve of his mouth that was making the part of her she refused to try and understand roar its triumph. He laughed and it sounded like a quieter version of the rain.

“Have they got you too, Korra?”

She took in a sharp breath at his use of her name because  _that_ had never been done before. She wasn’t sure what he meant because the time of  _equalization_ had long since passed and they were both stood here drenched in the element that they could bend off of themselves.

But they didn’t. And suddenly she was very sure what he meant.

His eyes danced with knowledge and he stepped forward. She stayed still.

“Did they get you?” he repeated and it was softer this time. She wasn’t sure if she actually heard his voice or of she was just reading his lips and her mind was supplying the low rise of his tone from memory—memory that had remained buried for so long and now it was hitting her like the lighting that flashed over their heads.

“Yes,” she whispered. It was a plea, a demand, and a challenge all at one time and she almost choked on the meaning of it all.  “They got me, Tahno.” Now it was a broken confession and she couldn’t find it in herself to be ashamed. He took another step forward. And another. And another.  _And another._

“They got me too, Korra.”

He reached out and the feeling of his hand against her cheek sent vibrations up and down her spine. He leaned down, his face growing nearer and nearer till Korra wasn’t sure if she wanted to bolt or if she wanted to close the gap quicker. The feeling of his forehead pressed against hers was strangely warm compared to the cold rain streaking down both of their faces. It was foreign to be here with a hand, especially the hand that had sent pro-bending combos at her in another lifetime, cupping her face in a gesture of acceptance more than apology.

The lightning flashed and his eyes were  _so close_ , pale green and blue all at the same time, watching her with a kind of intensity she hadn’t felt in  _so long_ —

“I need to escape,” she whispered.

He smiled. “Don’t we all.” 

An instant later she was running again, this time with another set of footsteps slapping the pavement at her side. When the haze cleared and she finally recognized the turn back, she swerved away. The slap of her boots against concrete was alone and she was left strangely sad and strangely frustrated. 

The next morning she left. 


	3. Help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set post-book three

He found her sat in a corner he most certainly  _never_ expected to find her in.

Head inclined against the shoddy wood wall, back hunched over away from the low lighting of the bar, and legs curled up on the uncomfortable booth seat, she was the  _spitting image_ of the ghost he’d never wanted to remember. The last time he had seen her she'd been soaked with rain, lit up with lightning, and embodiment of ferocity. It was what he had clung to when he read the papers, when he saw the black and white images of her being rolled to hospitals and lifted onto ferries. He wondered how she had gotten here in the first place without help and the hollow in him widened at the idea of her stumbling along the streets alone. 

He sat down across from her and there wasn’t a flicker of recognition. Hands that had pressed, fisted, and _beat_  curled tentatively around the foggy glass of a drink long turned warm. A strange curtain of hair that must have hung freely only out of convenience shrouded the face Tahno found himself positively aching to see. (Tahno knew how much of a struggle it could be to even  _breathe_  with something pressing down like concrete on an empty chest.) He hadn’t seen her in months and hungry fingers over black print were no substitute for the living, breathing mix of ash and steam that he had come to know as  _uh-vatar_.

He stared, never one who had to plan words out before. Uninhibited speech was Tahno’s forte, but fragility like this was meant to be handled differently. He knit his fingers beneath his chin and leaned forward.

“Hello, darling.” The term of endearment rolled off his tongue softly. Titles didn’t exist in places like this, and titles could be reminders of everything a person was drowning in.

The hair shifted back to reveal dull eyes, dim without the lucid gleam of ferocity. They regarded him blankly and eyelashes dipped down to brush against heavy purple bags when she blinked. She stared and words choked Tahno in his effort to unscramble them. He wouldn’t ask if she was ok because he knew just how the sentiment could carve more of a hollow into a person.  _Tahno, are you ok?_

“It’s a bit late for you to be out. Do you need help finding your way home?”

The hidden support in the words should have made her bristle at the implication that she, of all people, needed help.  She just watched him, eyes too drained to be calculating or contemplative.

“No.” Her voice was hoarse and rough with disuse, a shadow of the volume and weight she had possessed before.

He hesitated. “Would you like some help?”

The ambiguous term hung in the air. Both of them knew  _yes, she really fucking needed help_ but there were stages a person went through: broken, hopeless, and horribly, terribly alone. And even with people all around, offering, promising, and in Tahno’s case, simpering, there was still that engrained belief that you were in your own kind of sea, drowning while everyone screamed encouragement from a lighthouse far away on the shore. He wasn’t asking if she needed help. He was asking if she wanted it.

 A few more moments and a corner of downturned lips trembled with the effort of a slow tilt into a smile. “No one can help me.”

He leaned farther over and pressed a hand against her face, running his thumb over the slope of her cheekbone.

“Come on, tough girl. Let’s get you fixed up.”


	4. Visit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set the day after the last chapter

Tahno decided that air temple island was all together too personal for it to be comfortable for him.

The searching gazes of acolytes roamed over him, looking for something broken to mend or something wrong to right. It was suffocating. It reminded him far too much of cold, rainy wanderings through alleys after the event while the urgent need to react to the liquid sliding over his skin rose up like a suffocating layer over his head. Eyes had drifted over him then, too. They studied him unashamed in the dull light, trying to place the sharp features that seemed so familiar—just not on this wraith wandering around in a sopping mess of all that he had lost. He had felt so confined. Tiny and hollow in a world made large by the lack of connection within it. The sickening feeling of should have gagging him and their eyes reminding him—you’re on the bottom now, kid.

He walked through the hallway, head held high, determined to ignore the feeling entirely. He wasn’t here to travel through memories he had left far behind him (but having seen her in the same corner made them so much closer). He had dropped her off the night before without lingering long. They would have asked where he had found her and why she had been there but he was sure they all knew the answers to those questions and Tahno wasn’t needed to remind them. They hadn’t even recognized him in the orange light above the ferry dock, frenzied as they were in their relief and in making sure that she was alright.

Of course she wasn’t, but alright had become a much more relative term.

So here, making the trip in full daylight without a warm weight pressed against his back, Tahno wasn’t quite sure why he was so damned uncomfortable. Maybe it was the guarded eyes of the master trying to place him—oh yes, the probender. Of course I remember you. The words had been pointed but Tahno had just smiled, trying to appear as clean-cut and trustworthy as he possibly could. It was certainly a new experience but it must have been somewhat believable because he had been given directions to her room.

He finally reached her door and there was an overwhelming sense of anticipation that made his hand hesitate before turning the smooth knob. Eight months ago and Tahno would have flung the door open and gone straight in but ever since Avatar Korra had come to Republic City, he had been changed in more ways than one. So he stood, wondering if this was a good or bad thing, and if what he was going inside to see would hurt even more than what he had prepared for.

“Korra?”

There was a long pause and then—

“Come in.”

He let himself in before the hesitation kept in him from entering at all and there she was. Her back was turned to him and a tangle of brown hair hung down the seat of the wheelchair. An elbow was set on the arm rest to hold up her head as she stared out the window. He got the feeling that this was a frequent position.

He took a tentative step forward and a breeze blew in to rustle the gauzy curtains. She continued to stare out at the skyline of the city. He wondered if she was remembering or just staring. He knew what both felt like.

“Korra.”

The name was strange (because it had always been strangely forbidden to him) on his tongue but he was careful to avoid titles as he had been the previous night.

The head lifted and she turned over her shoulder slowly. Tired eyes widened.

“I thought I was imagining things. I mean, they never said you were the one that…”

As she faded off her eyes glazed over again, fixing on a spot above him. Tahno walked over to her bed and lowered himself down. Standing would only emphasize the height difference and he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable by kneeling.

“I didn’t stick around long enough for them to remember me. I was in and out.”

There was a pause as he waited for a reply and then remembered that she wouldn’t be as ready with sharp retorts as she had been. And that was ok. They hadn’t exchanged more than a handful of words in months and it was a strangely comfortable silence. When Tahno thought about it, he couldn’t remember a time where they had shared this much silence without running or moving, or fighting. Then again, they had been very different people before all of this.

And when he left a few hours later, he found himself thinking that if they had been similar before, there was even more understanding now.

**Author's Note:**

> These chapters aren't exactly connected plot-wise but they're meant to show the development of the two characters through the events of the show and how they still "fit " together through it all. Feel free to request a specific point in time for one of their collisions.


End file.
